Avon Groups Help Student Win $40,000 Scholarship: Letter

My parents always let us know how lucky we are to grow up in Avon Lake. They talk about the great parks, school system, library, neighbors, coaches, and so forth. And they couldn't have been more right.

I recently as many of you know. Contestants created a video about what servant Leadership meant to them and uploaded it onto the contest website. Contestants needed to get people to vote each day for their video and the top ten videos with the most votes went before a panel of judges.

In order to be in the running, I needed as many votes as possible. I reached out to the community and WOW! What an overwhelming show of support I received, over 1,700 votes actually.  I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who supported me by voting and helping to get the word out.
First of all, I would like to thank teachers and school administrators both past and present. Your encouragement and support meant the world to me. I would also like to thank my teammates, friends, and peers at , St. Ignatius, and St. Edward.

To city officials such as Councilwoman Fenderbosch, John Shondel, and Mayor Zilka as well as the and and Judge Bilancini, thank you for getting the word out.

A big thank you to Sister Connie and Pat for voting and forwarding it to the Knights of Columbus and also parishioners who voted. Thank you to the library for allowing me to put flyers out. Thank you to my neighbors- you are really the best. Thanks to all the people I met when going door to door.

Thank you to all the retail establishments who supported me by voting like the store. Finally, I would like to thank those individuals in neighboring communities that voted such as the t, where I work, and EMH Emergency Center. I now understand how as a community we all work together to help out each other to make this a fantastic place to live.

Lo and behold I won the first place prize of $40,000!  I still cannot believe it, I will be forever grateful.  Thank you all so very much, I couldnʼt have done it without you!

Danielle Patton

Avon Lake